Working at illness

Growing up, I was always removed from being around anyone who was terminally ill, but even the mere thought of hearing about someone’s terminal illness would make me struggle emotionally.

I’m coping to act as a support to my father, but it is slowly becoming clear that because I deal with other things too, it’s beginning to take its toll on my digestive health. Unfortunately, when I’m dealing with any form of stress, my digestion is the first to go. As a child I didn’t deal with illness in the same way I’m dealing with it now. Of course my parents were ill from time to time, but they weren’t terminally ill.

I am not finding this easy. I find myself wishing I didn’t have this responsibility. Not having to deal with illness in this way as a child, has made all of this much harder, but even if I had, with all that I deal with I would have still struggled to get to this point, but I still believe that it’s good to be subjected to these things as children, if we are to manage as adults.

Seeing my father terminally ill reinforces that I am now all grown up. It’s too close to call. I don’t have my mother around me. Once my father goes, the responsibility lies with me, with no safety net to fall back on.

In the meantime, I continue to tell myself that I will do what I can. Whatever I can’t do, I’ll take a step back, or I’ll end up doing nothing at all. If I can do something that has to be better than doing nothing.

8 thoughts on “Working at illness”

I feel the same way. As a kid when my grandmother was terminally ill, I only saw her once in the beginning of the illness. I just could not bring myself to see her in that condition because I could not fix her.

When I was 29 my grandfather was in the hospital and it brought back those feelings of helplessness.

My mom has Parkinson’s Disease and still at 40 those feelings creep back. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to deal with “terminal illness.”